Friday, August 10, 2012

Nora Hollemon

The following is the story of the brutal murder of an old depu­ty
sheriff, reminiscent of the types of killings that were commonplace in
the Wild West days of the mid-1800s. History buffs of this time period
will recall that it was not at all unusual for a killer to force his
victim to dance while firing bullets in rapid succession at his victim’s feet, or to force the victim to play quick draw
with an empty weapon, the result of the torturous ordeal almost always
ending with the brutal, violent death of the victim who, by the way,
was more often than not a lawman. Although such a thing is nearly
unheard of nowadays it did, in fact, happen to a harmless old
self-proclaimed deputy sheriff in Oregon in 1982 proving, once again,
that history does have a way of repeating itself.
The story opens on Saturday morning, March 6, 1982 in Granite,
Oregon, population 14. Located on an unpaved road 30 miles east of
Portland, Granite was once a frontier gold mining com­munity whose
dwindling population has nearly turned it into a ghost town. On this
particular Saturday morning it was still very cold, the wrath of winter
still present in every form and sense of the word. Granite was
accessible only by four-wheel drive or snowmobile during this time of
year, and was 10 miles from the nearest paved road. It is 14 miles to
the nearest town, which is Sumpter, barely a dot on the map itself, and
no one would brave the trip unless it was an absolute emergency. No
one, that is, ex­cept for one man. His name — Edward A. “Bud” Morrow,
now only a memory in the minds of those who knew and loved him because,
on Saturday, March 6, 1982, he was brutally murdered, literally shot
down in cold blood in his own home.
It wasn’t until Saturday afternoon that anyone knew Morrow had been
killed. Slim Johnson, who owns a cabin approx­imately two miles from
Morrow’s, prob­ably hadn’t a care in the world as he snow-mobiled
towards Morrow’s rustic A-frame cabin. Even as he approached the front
door, noticing several sets of footprints in the snow, Johnson had no
reason to suspect that his longtime friend lay dead on the other side of
the cabin door.
After knocking several times and get­ting no response, Johnson
thought he’d look in on old Bud, now the acting town marshal, and
resident of Granite since he was six. After all, he could be sick and
laid up in bed. But when he entered the home, Johnson discovered
otherwise.
Morrow was lying on his davenport, shirtless and rigid, dead of an app- parent gunshot wound to the chest.
There were no telephones for miles, and Morrow’s police radio was the
only source of communication with the out­side world. When he’d
determined that Morrow was dead, Johnson set about trying to figure out
how to use the radio to call for help. After a few moments, he was able
to reach the Grant County sher­iff’s office in Canyon City, and he
told Sheriff David T. Haynes of his sad dis­covery. Haynes told him to
stay put and not to touch anything, adding that it would take a while
for help to arrive due to the distance and the fact that the roads were
covered with snow. Johnson reluc­tantly agreed to wait.
When Haynes and a group of deputies arrived later, they were indeed
shocked by the violent way Morrow had been killed, and were saddened
because they had all known and loved Bud for years. With a look of
sorrow in his eyes, Haynes asked Johnson how he found Morrow. Johnson
replied that he had found him just as he lay there dead on the
davenport.
“I reached with my hand and felt his neck,” said Johnson. “It was
very cold and hard. That’s when I radioed you guys.” Meanwhile, Haynes
and his men made a preliminary search of Mor­row’s cabin, being careful
not to disturb anything until additional investigators arrived.
“There wasn’t a damn reason in the world for anybody to shoot him,”
said Norm Wade, a mining official from nearby Sumpter who knew Morrow
well. Wade said that Morrow was a life­time resident of Granite who
started out 20 years before as a self-appointed pro­tector of property;
that is, at least, when he wasn’t gold-mining. But even when he was
mining he tried to look out for others, always lending a helping hand
whenever possible.

“When Bud was around, people wouldn’t ever worry about their
property because he knew where everything was around there. A few years
back they de­cided to make him a special deputy so that he would have
legal authority to chase people away that were up to no good. He never
riled anybody up, and if some trouble-maker refused to leave, he would
just radio for help.” Wade said that Morrow’s duties as a deputy
in­volved mostly “claim jumpers and break-ins,” and he took a guy to
the Baker jail on bad check charges once. Before he became a deputy,
Morrow worked at a lumber mill in Baker, but had to give up the job
when he injured his ankle in an accident and turned to pros­pecting for
gold at a couple of small mines he had. He enjoyed talking to the
tourists who visited Granite, telling them fascinating tales of his
experiences dur­ing the old gold-mining days, and they enjoyed hearing
the stories as much as he enjoyed telling them.
When additional investigators ar­rived, including Rocky Mink, the
only technician in the Oregon State Police crime lab in Ontario, it
didn’t take long for them to conclude that Morrow’s cabin had been
ransacked by a person or persons unknown looking for anything of value.
Or perhaps that’s what the per­petrator wanted the cops to think,
hoping they would concentrate on burglary and robbery as the motive in
Morrow’s death. At this point in the investigation, however, the cops
weren’t ready to be­gin theorizing on motives, even though they had some
ideas about Morrow’s death based on what they had learned from the
Granite locals. The cops we­ren’t going to release any particulars,
though, until they knew all there was to know.
The cops noted that the smell of gun­powder was still present inside
the cabin, although it was becoming faint. But the smell was still
strong enough to prompt the lawmen to speculate that more than one shot
had been fired. Speculation quickly turned to certainty when Rocky Mink
discovered a .45-caliber slug lodged in one of the walls of the cabin.
At this point, however, the cops weren’t certain if that was the same
bullet that killed Morrow. They reasoned that it could be, had it
passed cleanly through Morrow’s body before lodging itself in the wall.
But there were other possibili­ties that had to be explored before
jump­ing to any conclusions. Among those was the possibility that some
gunplay may have occurred in Morrow’s cabin be­fore he was fatally
shot, a theory that quickly gained some ground when the cops found a
color photograph of Mor­row with a bullet hole through it.
Had the photo been accidentally shot, perhaps by Morrow himself, the
cops wondered. Or had Morrow’s killers shot it while the old deputy
looked on, know­ing that a similar bullet would soon be ripping through
his own flesh and bone instead of just Kodak paper? If the latter were
the case, the cops reasoned that Morrow’s killer(s) had to be cruel,
calcu­lating and cold-blooded, the kind who en­joyed tormenting victims
before sending their souls into eternity.
After an exhaustive examination of the inside of Morrow’s cabin,
investigators discovered another bullet hole in the wall near the
ceiling. After careful examina­tion, it was determined that the bullet
had not lodged in the wall, but instead had passed through the wall to
the outside. After data had been recorded and studied, it was determined
that the bullet hole had been made by a .308-caliber slug fired from a
high-powered rifle. Believing that the .308-caliber slug was the one
that had killed Morrow, Oregon State Police crime lab technician Rocky
Mink first traced the trajectory of the bullet with string. After
determining the most likely trajectory, Mink returned to Ontario to pick
up some additional equipment, in­cluding a laser device.
In the meantime, while detectives gathered additional evidence at the
cabin site, James Howbert, a pathologist from Bend, was brought in to
conduct the auto­psy on Bud Morrow’s body. According to Howbert, at the
conclusion of the auto­psy, the bullet that killed Morrow entered his
body underneath his left arm, pene­trated and passed through both
lungs, ex­ited through the right side of his chest, and passed
completely through his right arm before hitting the cabin’s wall and
passing through to the outside. “The wounds were consistent with those
caused by a high-powered rifle,” How­bert told the cops.

Meanwhile, Rocky Mink returned to the cabin with his laser
equipment. After setting up the device, he directed the laser beam
through the bullet hole in the cabin wall in an attempt to determine
the bul­let’s exact trajectory. After Mink had correctly traced the
path of the lethal bul­let, an extensive search involving many men was
made of the area where it should have landed. But after cutting down
more than 50 trees in their attempt to find the killer bullet, the
sleuths gave up and returned to the sheriff’s office empty-handed.
The next day, however, the cops re­vealed to the media new important
evi­dence pertinent to the solving of the case that they earlier had
not revealed out of fear of giving the suspects time to fabri­cate an
alibi. Details of the evidence was released to the press in two parts,
all of which gave an interesting new turn to one of the most notable
murder cases in the history of the state.
First, detectives revealed that they had found several sets of
footprints in the snow, several of which originated from the house
across the road from Morrow’s cabin. Two women lived there, a mother and
her daughter. Morrow’s nearest neighbors. Adeline Hollemon, 64, and
her daughter Nora, 40, had lived there for years, the cops learned, and
were known to have been involved in several heated disputes or
arguments with Mor­row in the past, disputes which could, perhaps, be
better described as hillbilly feuds. But were the feuds serious enough
to cause these two women to want Mor­row dead?
If so, what had been the causes or reasons behind the serious
altercations between Morrow and the two women? The cops knew these
questions, and many others, would have to be answered if they were to
crack the case. And the cops also knew that, in a community like
Granite, everyone knows each other and knows each other well, and they
reasoned that all it would take was one person who was willing to talk
about the situation “up on the hill” to point them in the right
direction. But the cops soon found more than one person who was willing
to talk, which was certainly more than they had counted on and brings
us to the second press release outlining evi­dence so far obtained.
The Grant County Sheriff’s Depart­ment revealed to reporters that
they had ferreted out several witnesses who told them the killing of
Deputy Sheriff (and self-proclaimed mayor of Granite) Bud Morrow was
discussed in a Sumpter, Oregon saloon three days before the 53-year-old
lawman was shot to death. One of the witnesses told the cops that he
was in the cafe portion of a tavern the night of March 3, 1982 when he
purportedly heard Nora Hollemon, a former reg­istered nurse but at that
time Morrow’s neighbor, make remarks that were de­rogatory in content
about Morrow as well as foretelling his death.
Nora Hollemon appeared to be drunk that night, the witness said, and
she allegedly called Morrow a ‘low-down son of a bitch’ and a ‘drunken
bum.’” She also stated, according to the witness, that she and her
mother had been feuding with Morrow for at least the last eight years.
The witness, however, did not know what the feuding had been about.
Nora said Bud was going to be dead by Monday, the witness told the
cops, emphasizing that Nora Hollemon made the remark about Morrow to no
one in particular as she appeared to be in a drunken stupor. The
witness also told the cops that a man was now living with the two
women, a 6 feet 4 inch, very large, muscular man with a pock-marked
face who appeared to be romantically involved with Nora. The cops
learned from the witness that the man, Pasquale “Pat” Joseph D’Onofrio,
34, had been in the area only a short while and was reportedly from
somewhere on the east coast. When the cops asked the witness how he
knew that D’Onofrio was romantically involved with Nora Hollemon, the
witness cited the fact that D’Onofrio was living with Nora and her
mother, and he had been seen kissing Nora inside the tavern. Likewise,
Nora had been seen putting her hand on
D’Onofrio’s knee on several occasions. After hearing these details,
it didn’t take long for the detectives inves­tigating the case to decide
they wanted to learn more about this mystery man D’Onofrio, and just
what his connection with the two Hollemon women was.

It didn’t take long for the cops to learn that D’Onofrio was a
native of Derby, Connecticut, and that he had recently resided in West
Palm Beach, Florida, where he used the alias Pasquale Russo. When they
checked his background a little further, Oregon State Police and Grant
County sheriff’s deputies said that they learned D’Onofrio was being
sought by Connecticut police and was shot by officers there nearly a
year be­fore during a high-speed chase on a state highway.
According to a source in Connecticut D’Onofrio, on March 21, 1981,
allegedly picked up a hitchhiker in a stolen car and subsequently led
police on a chase heading the wrong way on U.S. 8 in southwestern
Connecticut and escaped after being shot. According to the source,
D’Onofrio was wanted on charges of first-and second-degree lar­ceny,
three counts of first-degree reck­less endangerment, first-degree
attemp­ted assault and failure to appear in court. Convictions on all of
those charges could carry penalties of more than 50 years in prison.
As evidence in the case mounted, a Granite local came forward and
told the cops he heard D’Onofrio bragging that he was “a bone-crusher
from the Mafia,” in Granite to carry out a contract on some­one.
Additionally, the cops learned, on the evening of March 4th the older
Holle­mon woman, Adeline, accompanied her daughter Nora and D’Onofrio to
the tavern where she also was heard speaking bitterly of Bud Morrow.
“Adeline said Bud was illiterate and didn’t deserve to be sheriff,” a
witness told the cops. “Nora was agreeing with her.” After what he’d
heard from the locals in Gra­nite and nearby Sumpter, not to mention the
outstanding warrants on D’Onofrio in Connecticut, Grant County’s chief
depu­ty sheriff, Dave Fredenburgh, was sent by Sheriff Haynes to the
Hollemon house to make the arrest.
Armed with search and arrest war­rants, not to mention his own weapon
and several armed deputies. Fredenburgh went up the hill to the
Hollemon house, across the street from Morrow’s cabin. Once there, the
deputies surrounded the house, their weapons drawn, and Fredenburgh
identified himself while ordering D’Onofrio out of the house. A few
moments later, D’Onofrio appeared at the front door of the cabin with
his hands raised, obviously just aroused from sleep.
After D’Onofrio had been taken into custody and handcuffed, Deputy
Fredenburgh served the search warrants on the Hollemon women. Following a
lengthy, thorough search of the inside of the Hollemon house,
sheriff’s deputies found at least a dozen guns inside, most of them
underneath Adeline Hollemon’s bed and most of them loaded. The cops
also ferreted out a motorcyclist’s black jacket which belonged to
D’Onofrio and had holes in the lining where three hand­cuff keys were
found; a Western-style shirt; blue jeans with light amounts of
spattered blood on the left leg; gloves, which showed no evidence of
blood; boots, and a wallet with $125 inside.
Additionally, the cops found a .45- caliber revolver at an
undisclosed loca­tion, believed to be the one that fired the slug which
was found lodged in the wall of Morrow’s cabin. Still more searching
uncovered two vials of gold nuggets (be­lieved taken from Morrow’s cabin
when it was ransacked the day he was killed) and a sheriff’s badge
(was it Morrow’s?), all of which were found beneath frozen foods in the
freezer at the Hollemon home. The evidence was tagged and sent to the
state police crime labs for analysis and, in the meantime, D’Onofrio
was held without bail in the Grant County Jail in Canyon City.
Following tests at the state police crime labs, it was determined
that sever­al of the firearms found at the Hollemon house had recently
been fired, including the .45-caliber handgun as well as the
.308-caliber high-powered rifle, the sus­pected murder weapon. However,
no fingerprints were found on the suspect .308 rifle.
The next day, sheriffs deputies re­turned to the Hollemon home where
they arrested Adeline and Nora Hollemon. The women, along with
D’Onofrio, were charged with murder, aggravated murder, conspiracy and
robbery. The suspects were expected to be transferred to the Baker
County Jail in Baker, and later to the Union County Jail in La Grande,
according to Foster Glass, Grant County district attorney.

In the meantime, the investigation into the killing of Deputy
Sheriff Bud Morrow continued by the sheriff’s de­partments of Grant and
Baker Counties and the Oregon State Police. A deputy in Canyon City
said that it was not clear if Morrow had been conducting an
inves­tigation that might have led to his killing. In any case, police
said, the speculation about D’Onofrio being a hit man for the Mafia
fizzled out due to a lack of sub­stantiating evidence, not to mention
the unlikelihood of such a preposterous pos­sibility. Even though the
cops learned that Morrow had expressed fear that someone might try to
kill him, they de­cided that it was more likely an angry local might
want him dead than the Mafia.
A source close to the investigation confirmed that, before his death,
Mor­row had mentioned to several people that he was having problems
with other area residents and feared that someone would try to kill him.
The source reported that residents of Granite and Sumpter said a great
deal of bitterness had mushroomed between Morrow and the Hollemon
women, purportedly stemming from the several occasions when Morrow
repri­manded the woman for threatening area residents, as well as
visitors.
According to the source, who wished to remain unidentified, Morrow
alleged­ly was held at gunpoint and forced to demonstrate “fast draws”
with his un­loaded Western-style handgun before his tormentors shot him
to death.
As the investigation into the murder of Bud Morrow continued, a
picture depict­ing the Hollemon women as hostile and unfriendly began to
develop. One Sumpter resident told investigators that the Hollemon
women occasionally “ran off” summer visitors to Granite who came to see
the frontier cemetery near their home. And on one occasion, police were
told, a U.S. Forest Service em­ployee stopped by their place to ask
direc­tions and “they threatened to shoot him if he didn’t get off their
property.”
On another occasion, the cops learned, a man from Sumpter hired an
attorney to send the Hollemon women a letter requesting that they return
several items they had allegedly taken from a cabin in Granite. As a
result, the two women came to Sumpter on two occa­sions with a .30-30
caliber rifle, alleged­ly looking for the man. “I’ll tell you, I’ve run a
lot of miles trying to stay out of their way,” the man said, wishing
to remain unidentified.
Norm Wade, the mining official from Sumpter who had earlier talked to
police, informed them that the two Hollemon women had lived in Granite
for more than a decade. “Years ago, Ade­line was a hell of a nice
woman,” he said. “Nora Hollemon had once been a registered nurse in
Ontario and Baker and, according to some people, she was an excellent
one.” Wade also told the cops that D’Onofrio arrived in Granite about a
week or two before Morrow was murdered, and was caring for horses and a
home which belonged to a long distance truck driver.
“He talked a lot, bragged,” Wade said. “He said stuff about how he
liked to fight. At one point, he said he worked for the Mafia. Just the
sort of stuff you listen to and ignore.” Wade, who had known Morrow
well, then reminisced with sad­ness about Bud, who was already missed by
most folks in the area.
“He was enough of a friend to every­ body in this county that
everybody’s still in shock. He was irreplaceable,” said Wade. “The first
time I ever saw Bud, he was wearing a .357 Magnum, and he had it in a
toy holster with a ruby on it, and he had a toy badge. He was asleep
with his feet propped up on a table.” Wade also told the investigators
that in spite of the rough atmosphere and rugged image of Granite and
nearby Sumpter, the murder of Bud Morrow greatly disturbed most of the
residents of the area.
“This county was never that vio­lent,” said Wade. “There was a lot of
nose-bustin’ and butt-kickin’, but there wasn’t much murder here. They
had a couple of murders, way back before 1900 and those are the ones I
am aware of besides, of course, the killing of old Bud.”

In the meantime, as investigators attempted to produce additional
evidence and testimony, Morrow was buried in the pioneer cemetery
behind his cabin where he had spent most of his 53 years. As last rites
were being held for Morrow, a Grant County grand jury was handing down
indictments against the three murder sus­pects in Canyon City, the
county seat nearly 60 miles from Granite.
D’Onofrio immediately signed a state­ment of indigency and attorney
Don Cro­nin was appointed to represent him. Dis­trict Attorney Glass
said that Adeline and Nora Hollemon were in the process of signing the
necessary affidavits also, so that they too could receive court-
appointed attorneys to represent them. The three suspects were arraigned
before Circuit Judge Thomas Mosgrove.
In the meantime, the matter concern­ing D’Onofrio and Connecticut
authorities was clarified when Oregon author­ities were informed that
D’Onofrio was mistakenly released from the state jail in New Haven in
June 1981 after he posted $300 bond for a variety of misdemeanor charges
leveled against him. As it turned out, felony charges were pending
against him as a result of the high speed chase in which he was shot by
police. “He will not be extradited until the matter here is settled,”
said Grant County Justice Court Judge Jean Zeiler. “The warrant in
Con­necticut was for several charges but none that would equal this.”
D’Onofrio was held on a $250,000 bond for the murder, burglary and
conspiracy charges in Oregon, plus $60,000 bail on fugitive war­rants
from Connecticut. The Hollemon women were being held on $250,000 bail
each.
Nora Hollemon was the first defendant to go on trial for the murder
of Bud Mor­row. Jury selection began on August 6, 1982, and defense
lawyers Wes Johnson mitt Craig Emerson mentioned the John Hinckley Jr.
trial several times in their questioning of potential jurors, asking the
panel members if they approved or disapproved of the verdict and of
psychiatrists, a strong indication they would he employing a mental
disease or detect defense. Selection went slowly, but by August 11th all
jurors had been selected and were ready to visit the scene of the
murder in Granite.
The visit to Morrow’s cabin didn’t take long and, after viewing the
inside of the cabin and the surrounding areas, the jurors were taken
hack to the courtroom of Circuit Judge Thomas Mosgrove, where they heard
opening statements from both defense and prosecution, in which neither
the defense nor the pro­secution accused Hollemon of firing the fatal
shot that killed Edward “Bud” Morrow. Instead, both sides quoted Nora
Hollemon as saying that the fatal shot was fired by Pasquale D’Onofrio,
and District Attorney Glass told the jury that Hollemon loaned the gun
to D’Onofrio, thus making her an acces­sory to the murder. Defense
attorney Emerson told the jury that both Holle­mon women were
intimidated out of fear of D’Onofrio.
“He (D’Onofrio) told the women he was from the Mafia, that he came up
to do a job, that Bud was in the way, that Bud has gotta go,” District
Attorney Glass told the jury. Glass also told the jury they would hear
testimony that Nora Hollemon’s relationship with D’Onofrio was not one
of fear but that it was, in­stead, affectionate. “They were seen
holding hands, laughing, smiling, hav­ing a good time. They practiced
together with firearms before Morrow’s death, and testimony will be
given by witnesses who allegedly heard conversation among the Hollemons
and D’Onofrio that ‘Bud has to go’ ,”said Glass. While in jail, Glass
told the jury, Ms. Holle­mon was heard to say, ” ‘I’m not sorry Bud’s
dead. He deserved to die.’ “
Glass also said that Ms. Hollemon said she was not present when
D’Onofrio allegedly shot Morrow but, he con­tinued, she described in
great detail cer­tain events which led up to Morrow’s death in great
detail. According to Glass, Nora Hollemon also told investigators that
D’Onofrio fired a shot into the cabin wall to scare Morrow, then forced
the victim to practice “quick draws” with his own unloaded revolver.

Did D’Onofrio actually pull the trig­ger when Morrow was shot? Or
was he merely being used by the Hollemon women, simply their patsy so
they could settle a long-time grudge against Mor­row? If D’Onofrio
pulled the trigger, what was his motive? What did he have against
Morrow, particularly since he’d been in Granite only a short time?
These questions, and many others, were the kinds the nine woman, three
man jury would have to contemplate during their deliberations, then
decide if the Holle­mon defense was merely trying to shift the guilt to
another person.
Defense attorney Emerson painted a different picture of his client
for the jury. He said Nora Hollemon was terrified of D’Onofrio, a
“self-described bone-crusher” who bragged to her of killing 30 persons
and also threatened her and her mother. Emerson said that when the
Hollemons were seen socializing in Sumpter with D’Onofrio prior to the
slaying, “they had to appear to go along with D’Onofrio to protect their
own lives.” Emerson also told the jury that Nora Hollemon had no one
to turn to in her fear of D’Onofrio, and that she and her mother “fed
on each other’s dis­trust” of other people to such a degree that they
both suffered from a “shared paranoia condition” at the time D’Onof­rio
came to Granite. Emerson said that psychiatrists would testify later
in the trial that Nora Hollemon suffered from a “diagnosable mental
illness,” but he de­clined to be more specific.
“He (D’Onofrio) is 6-feet-5, 280 pounds, and is a very intimidating
per­son. He told the two women, ‘I’ve got a contract on you two.’”
During the course of the trial, witnes­ses who earlier had told the
cops of the incriminating discussions they heard be­tween the Hollemon
women and D’Onofrio at the tavern in Sumpter were repeated for the jury,
as well as testi­mony from scientific witnesses such as Dr. James
Howbert, who performed the autopsy on Morrow. In spite of defense
protest, color photographs of the wounds Morrow sustained were admitted
into evidence and shown to the jury, which brought gasps and looks of
shock from several of the panel members. Morrow probably lived two or
three minutes after he was shot, Howbert told the stunned jury.
After nearly three weeks of testimony in one of the most dramatic
trials to come out of Oregon, Nora Hollemon was found guilty of felony
murder, conspira­cy to commit felony murder, and first-degree burglary.
She was found innocent on charges of aggravated murder, con­spiracy to
commit aggravated murder, and first-degree robbery.
“Apparently the jury didn’t feel she pulled the trigger, but they
felt she aided and abetted and assisted in Morrow’s murder,” said
District Attorney Glass. “The jury apparently did not feel that Morrow
was a full-time police officer (otherwise the jury would have found
Hollemon guilty of aggravated murder as well). However, they found that
she was guilty of aiding and abetting and assisting and being involved
in felony murder.” Felony murder is charged when someone is murdered
during the course of another felony, such as rob­bery and burglary.
Mosgrove ordered a pre-sentence investigation, but set no date for
sentencing.
At the request of Adeline Hollemon’s attorneys, Ralph Smith and
Timothy T.A. Jensen, both of Baker, the woman’s trial date was postponed
indefinitely due to the fact that they needed additional time to
prepare a defense and purportedly because of their client’s mental
state. They felt that she was not mentally cap­able of standing trial.
Meanwhile, D’Onofrio’s trial was moved to Burns, Oregon in Harney
County, at the request of his attorney, Stephen Titkin, through a change
of venue motion. D’Onofrio’s case was heard by Judge Mosgrove.
In his opening statements, Titkin said evidence would show only that
D’Onof­rio was in the wrong place at the wrong time and was a victim of
circumstances in the slaying of Morrow. Titkin told the jury that
blood found on his client’s pants at the time he was arrested was from
his own cut finger. Titkin said evidence would show that Morrow and all
three defendants share the same blood type and that tests conducted by
the state police crime labs failed to show otherwise.
Three young men who partied with Pasquale D’Onofrio in the tavern on
March 3, 1982 were called to testify at the trial by the prosecutors,
Assistant Attorney General Byron Chatfield of Salem and Grant County
District Attor­ney Glass. The witnesses testified that D’Onofrio made
threatening remarks against Morrow that night, and that the suspect was
buying drinks for the house with money he had won from slot machines in
Sparks, Nevada.
“I’ll get him — I’ll get Morrow,” one of the witnesses, Doug
Jennings, quoted D’Onofrio as saying over their drinks. The reason the
statements were made, according to the witness, was that Bud Morrow had
reportedly defined D’Onofrio as a “big, dumb wop.”
“He bought drinks for everybody,” John Ragsdale testified, “and said
she was wanted by the police. I forget which state.” After a few drinks
in the tavern, the group went to Jennings’ house where they smoked a
couple of joints, drank a few beers, then went back to the tavern,
“Would you characterize those state­ments as almost passing comments?”
de­fense attorney Titkin asked Jennings. “Yes,” Jennings replied. “Was
that just talk?” Titkin asked. “Yes,” Ragsdale replied.
Tom DeMaris, Grant County sheriff’s deputy, and Barry Lawson, a state
police investigator, both testified that Nora Hol­lemon stated during
an interview that she helped plan Morrow’s slaying and that all three
were involved. “She said all three of them were participating equally,”
De­Maris said during questioning by Pro­secutor Chatfield.
“I asked Nora if all three were in­volved,” Lawson told the jury, “or
if there was just one who wanted Bud dead. She said they talked
freely, and they were all for killing Bud Morrow.”
When Nora Hollemon was interro­gated again, a tape recorder was used
to record her statement. The tape was play­ed for the jury, in which
she detailed the events that led to Morrow’s death. Law­son asked her
what she thought after the shooting.
“It wasn’t so funny then,” Lawson said on the tape.
“It wasn’t funny to begin with,” she responded, on tape. “I thought
that he (D’Onofrio) was just going to use his hands and slap him
(Morrow) around a little.”
“Was there any question what you did was wrong?” Lawson asked.
“I knew it was against the law,” she said. “I knew if he (D’Onofrio)
did what he said he was going to do, I was going to put out exactly
what he said (report what had happened). I didn’t want no part of it.”
The same scientific evidence that was introduced in Nora Hollemon’s
trial was admitted into evidence in D’Onofrio’s trial, along with the
witnesses who over­heard the alleged plans to kill Morrow while the
defendants were drinking at the tavern. However, in spite of their
efforts, the state ultimately lost most of its case.
On January 27, 1983, Pasquale “Pat” D’Onofrio was found innocent of
the murder charges against him, but was found guilty of two counts of
first-degree burglary. D’Onofrio was sentenced to 10 to 30 years in
prison under the state’s dangerous offender statute and, under the
sentence imposed by Judge Mos­grove, he must serve a minimum of 10 years
and a maximum of 30 years in the state penitentiary. Additionally, he
will be extradited to Connecticut, where he will face the charges
pending against him there for various offenses.
Nora Hollemon, the first of the three defendants to be tried and
convicted, was sentenced to life imprisonment plus 20 years for her
involvement in the kill­ing of Bud Morrow.
Adeline Hollemon, 65, has been sent to the Oregon State Hospital to
undergo psychiatric evaluation, because psychiatrists Dr. Norman Janzer
and Dr. Paul Metzger termed her paranoid, with a delusional system,
shared paranoia and psychosis, and, because of mental de­fect, she was
unable to assist and partici­pate in her own defense. It was later
determined that Adeline Hollemon was psychologically able to assist in
her own defense at trial. She was convicted of murder by a jury on
October 22, 1986, but was acquitted several other charges including
aggravated murder, felony murder, and conspiracy to commit murder. On
December 29, 1986, she was sentenced to life in prison.
EDITOR’S NOTE:Norm Wade, Slim Johnson, Doug Jennings, and John Ragsdale are not
the real names of the persons so named in the foregoing story.
Fictitious names have been used because there is no reason for public
interest in the identities of these persons.